13 Jul Labour chair tells of ‘real nasty’ abuse from colleagues for voting for Brexit
THE chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party, John Cryer MP, has spoken out about the “real nasty” abuse he received from colleagues for being pro-Brexit.
In an in-depth interview with Gloria De Piero on GB News, he also criticised some Tory ministers of being disingenuous by pretending they have always been Brexiteers.
Asked if he feels like he is a pariah in the Labour Party for campaigning for Brexit, he said: “Not really. In the PLP there are some sharp differences, but they were on the Tory side.
“I mean, one of the most difficult things for me recently has been this sort of parade of Tory ministers who…pretend they were always Brexiteers – they weren’t, many of them campaigned for remain.
“The most difficult bit was after the referendum result, then the real poison started. Now, in both camps, in the Brexit camp and the remain camp, most people are overwhelmingly decent, honest, truthful, and they’re not personal, but in both camps you get an element who are deeply personal and vindictive.
“I was then on the receiving end of some real, real nasty stuff and it sort of showed me the worst…I think really the worst element in British politics. I mean, constant threats, constant abuse.”
Mr Cryer said he became a target for abuse, online and during public meetings, because he was the only member of the Shadow Cabinet who publicly came out in favour of Brexit.
“I did public meetings about it after the result so that people could basically come along and have a go at me, and they did.
“But I felt in the parliamentary party people were quite accepting that we had differences. I was the only member of the shadow cabinet who voted for Brexit – well, the only one who’s admitted to it, I mean maybe there were one or two others, but they’ve never admitted it to me or anybody else – so I was the only one.”
He said voters were dismayed by Labour’s then plan to push for a second referendum, which he opposed.
Mr Cryer said: “When the party shifted its position to for a second referendum, I did think we were going down the wrong path and we antagonised an awful lot of people in the North and in the Midlands.
“But, you know, you got to a critical mass where certain figures in the shadow cabinet switched to that position and it just became overwhelming, so I couldn’t do anything to stop that.
“Maybe momentum is the wrong word, but I couldn’t do anything to stop that momentum that was going in that direction.
“I think we made a mistake. In the sort of area where I grew up, where you grew up, tended to be Brexit areas – that’s where we antagonised people. I think now we’re recovering from it, but it’s taken a long time.”
He went on to tell Gloria how he was at work when Labour’s chief whip called him to tell him that his father, himself a former MP, had been killed in a car crash.
“The chief whip called me – who was then Derek Foster, and sadly is no longer with us – and I was at work, and I got this phone call, and the switchboard said the chief whip needs to talk to you now,” he said.
“I had no idea what happened, so obviously he told me what had happened. The car turned over – we never found out why, by the way; the police did their own inquiry, and then there was a second inquiry.
“That’s a bit of a long story, but the car turned over twice, and he was quite tall, so he died of head injuries.
“The back window was smashed out, so my Mum crawled out of the back window, so it was all pretty traumatic.
“I remember it was on the M1, and my mum and dad were taken to hospital in Watford, so I remember travelling from – I worked in central London, as I’ve done quite a lot, so I travelled up to Watford, and that was it.”
Mr Cryer said he has learned to live with the loss and it has been difficult to accept his absence.
He said: “Well, you sort of live with it, I suppose. I mean, it’s not easy. He was – funnily enough he was the same age that I am now when it happened.
“And for quite a long time afterwards, I kept thinking, ‘I’ll have to talk to my dad about that,’ and then ‘Oh no I can’t, he’s not here anymore,’ and you’ve got that sort of conditioned reflex that leads you to think he’s still around, and obviously he’s not.
“So, he went well before his time. I imagine he probably would have lived well into his 80s/90s if it hadn’t been for that accident.
“And if you knew him, he was always such a livewire; he was like a force of nature, and so it was difficult to accept that he was now no longer with us. You don’t get over something like that, you just come to terms with it.”
He also revealed that as a child he appeared as an extra in the iconic movie The Railway Children and that his father had persuaded the producers to film it in Keighley in West Yorkshire.
Mr Cryer explained: “The Keighley and Worth Valley Railway…it’s a preserved steam railway in West Yorkshire. My dad started it, not because he was able to buy it – he was just a local teacher – but he started the society which raised the money and they bought the railway…
“They went visiting various steam railways – there weren’t that many then – and they were based in the south-east, so why they decided to film in Keighley… I’ve always imagined it was probably my dad, he could be very persuasive when he wanted to be.
“So, when EMI arrived, he managed to persuade them to film it in Keighley on the Keighley and Worth Valley. What he then did was he got himself the job as technical director for the summer, and he then got all the family jobs as extras.
“I mean, the things he talked his way into. And, we got paid a fiver a day for hanging around in Edwardian clothes.”
